Carpet Picnic

Sometimes, I let the boys eat their lunch on a blanket in the family room. We call it a carpet picnic. For some reason, they think this is just fantastic.

I like it, because they always stay sitting down and actually eat all their lunch! I'm sure, though, that this wouldn't be the case if we had carpet picnics every day. The key is to space them out, so it's still a novelty when Carpet Picnic Day rolls around.

Anyway, carpet picnics: try it! You'll like it.

The big 3

My baby turned 3 this week!

His birthday fell on a Monday, so for Family Home Evening we had a little celebration. I had told Danny that, since it was his birthday, he could pick what we had for dinner:

Me: "Danny, it's your birthday! You can pick what we have for dinner. Do you want hot dogs?"

Danny: "Um, no. Steak."

Well, allrighty then. Steak it is. Danny ate his dinner on our "You are special today" red plate:


Since he's not a fan of icing, I decorated a little cake with powdered sugar and a template. Very easy!



Danny opened his presents from us, including a wooden food set you can "cut" and a Marble Run. That Marble Run has been a huge hit, all week long.




Friday night, we invited my parents, my brother Chris and his family, and Brandon's brother Kyle and his family over for a little party. The boys (and Leah) ran around like nuts all night long, and we just let them.



Danny got some more fun things, but I must say he has really taken a liking to this little toy dinosaur:


It coos and moves its arms when you stick your finger in its mouth. Weird! But he loves it and slept with it in his bed last night and is carrying it around with him today. I told him he could be the baby T-rex's daddy, and he said no, he can't, because he's just a kid. Such a realist.

Danny's second cake is sort of an inside joke. My boys both LOVE to play games on the internet, including this game called Random Defense. It's a strategic game of sorts, where you earn and place guns, research centers, etc. around the board and try to beat the advancing foe. Remarkably, they are both quite good at it! Danny loves to play Random Defense, so his cake is a Random Defense cake.


Danny was excited to blow out his candles one more time.


Daniel is just a joy to have in our family. He is sweet and funny and full of light. We couldn't imagine life without Danny. Happy birthday, baby boy!

Father/Son Campout

A few weeks ago, our ward had a Father/Son Campout. Our boys are a little young to camp overnight (in our opinion, anyway), so Brandon just took them for the evening and then brought them home to sleep in their own beds. Still, they had a blast! Or so I'm told.

Here are our little campers, gathering 'round the fire:


I believe the menu included chili, hot dogs, and s'mores. Mmmm. S'mores.



I'd love to tell you more about it, but I wasn't there, as I am neither a father, nor a son.

I went shopping and bought a cute scarf. Thus, a good time was had by all!

5!

Mason turned five years old at the beginning of October. I can't believe we have a five year old!

He was so excited for his birthday this year. We celebrated as a family and had planned to have a (stoplight themed) party with his friends from church. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the party at the last minute, due to illness. Mason was sick and running a fever the day before (and day of). In the current H1N1 climate, I had no choice but to cancel the festivities. We were all so bummed! And then we had waaaaay too much cake on our hands.

Mason requested a stoplight cake this year. I did my best to oblige, but it didn't turn out quite as I had hoped:


Mason loved it, though, and that's what matters. We opened presents and blew out the candles and celebrated five whole years with our sweet Mason.




Oh, I love my Mason! He is such a funny, creative boy. He is almost always humming a tune (although he doesn't like to sing anymore). He asks a million questions and is curious about EVERYTHING. Danny and Mason are the best of friends. Macey dearly loves his brother and can't wait for him to get up from his afternoon nap. He is so loving with smaller children and babies and even very sweet to me when he knows I'm not feeling well. When I hurt my back in September, he was so concerned and would ask me from time to time if it was feeling better yet. Now, if you know Mason you also know he is a strong-willed, emotional little kid! Still, I think all that spunk will serve him well throughout his life. I'm so glad he's in our family.

Happy birthday, my sweet boy!

School days!

In digging through my pictures, I realized I never posted pictures from the boys' first day of school this year. let's fix that!

Mason is in the Frog class this year at his preschool. He was excited for his first day!

Here he is, outside his classroom:


I peeked in, as things got underway, to see Mason getting situated at his table. I must say, his teacher this year is fantastic. She is so creative, energetic, and loving. I can't imagine a better preschool teacher - Mrs. W. is the best!


First day of school, our tradition is that we have homemade chocolate chip cookies after lunch and talk about the day. Mmmm - cookies!


Danny started school two days later. He's in the Tiny Turtle class!

Outside the door, getting ready to go in:

Danny ran right in - he was so happy to finally go to his class, after two years of watching Mason go to school. His teacher is just as amazing. She also does the music classes for the whole preschool - she's very talented!


I love that my boys are doing well in preschool, having fun, and learning to be a little independent. At the same time, seeing my little ones all dressed up for school on the first day with their backpacks always makes me tear up, just a bit. My babies! They're getting so big!

Halloween wrap-up

The boys were really looking forward to Halloween this year, so we celebrated all week long! Monday night, we invited our friends the Claytons over for Family Home Evening. We had a quick lesson, and then got to work carving pumpkins. We ambitiously purchased one pumpkin per child, and then quickly realized that was just not going to happen. We ended up carving one pumpkin per family, and even with that, the kids lost interest and left to go play. But the moms and dads persevered to the end, and we all had a super fun night.

Here we are at the outset, when the kiddos were still interested in the carving process:

And here we are at the end, having been abandoned by the children:


Brandon and I used one of the templates from the carving kit to make this cute ghost:


The night before, I had made this tasty pumpkin pie, which we enjoyed for our treat, along with some pumpkin chocolate chip bread. It was certainly a pumpkin-themed evening.


Halloween day, I made the boys a fun lunch - I cut the sandwiches out with a pumpkin cookie cutter and made little bats out of cheese and teddy grahams. Spooky!


That evening, we ate dinner with our friends the Yoders, and then Brandon went home to hand out candy while Lien and I took our boys out trick-or-treating. They had such fun!

When I asked the kids what they wanted to be for Halloween, they answered without reservation. Danny wanted to be a tiger, and Mason wanted to be a fireman. I must say, they looked cute. I found Danny's costume at Old Navy. Look at my cute tiger tot!

I wanted to draw a better nose on him, but he wouldn't let me. As soon as I got out the eyeliner and started to work on him, Mason exclaimed "Mom! We don't write on people! Only on paper!" Daniel started to cry hysterically, and that was the end of that. I did get a little bit of a nose drawn on, and that just had to suffice.

I made Mason's costume out of a black sweatsuit from Wal-Mart, felt, and yellow duct tape. I thought it turned out pretty cute!

We trick-or-treated in Lien's neighborhood for awhile, then headed back home to hit our court and the neighboring street. Let me just say - these guys would have kept going! They were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Finally, we called it quits and went home to examine their haul:


Of course, they ate too much candy and were bouncing off the walls at bedtime. But that's what Halloween is all about, right?

Odyssey in the Odyssey: Coming Home

Note: I am terribly, horribly behind in my blogging. Accordingly, I'm going to start cranking out posts here, which will mostly consist of photos. But that's what people really want to see anyway, right? So, without further adieu, here's the condensed version of our two-day drive home from Lake Winnipesaukee:

We stopped in New York City, hoping to make a quick stop at Ground Zero. It seemed like a good idea at the time. As it turns out, it's completely impossible to make a "quick trip" anywhere in New York City.

Here's Ground Zero:

You really can't see anything there, as they have it surrounded with a temporary barrier of sorts:



It was rainy and we paid something like $20 to park for less than a half hour. We basically jumped out of the car, ran through the 9/11 Memorial "Preview," and snapped this picture in front of St. Paul's Chapel:


But hey - I finally made it to Broadway!


The traffic in NYC is crazy, even on a Sunday afternoon. Here we are, about to enter the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey:


We spent the night with family of family (Anne's brother's family) in Pennsylvania. They were very kind to host our rambunctious crew! The next morning, we continued on our way home, stopping at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Let me say this - I wish I had 2 days to completely explore Gettysburg. There is so much to see and read, I would have loved to have taken it all in. But at this point, we had two tired kids on our hands and we were pretty ready to be home in our beds. So, we purchased the CD self-guided tour and breezed through the sites in just a few hours.

There were actual, original cannons!


The Eternal Light peace memorial:


Danny and me, sitting atop Little Roundtop. My mind can't quite wrap itself around the horrors that took place on this little piece of land.


When we'd had all we could take, we loaded up our crew and headed off to Ohio. We rolled in somewhere around 11 pm. Man, we were glad to be home. We traveled nine states in 8 days, saw church history sites, old friends, Niagara Falls, Lake Winnepesaukee, the Atlantic Ocean, New York City, Ground Zero, and Gettysburg. Whew! I need a vacation from my vacation!